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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
It costs only forty-four sen to burn a child. The son of one of my neighbors was burned a few days ago.
The little stones with which he used to play lie there in the sun just as he left them.... Curious, this
child-love of stones! Stones are the toys not only of the children of the poor, but of all children at one
period of existence: no matter how well supplied with other playthings, every Japanese child wants
sometimes to play with stones. To the child-mind a stone is a marvelous thing, and ought so to be, since
even to the understanding of the mathematician there can be nothing more wonderful than a common
stone. The tiny urchin suspects the stone to be much more than it seems, which is an excellent suspicion;
and if stupid grown-up folk did not untruthfully tell him that his plaything is not worth thinking about, he
would never tire of it, and would always be finding something new and extraordinary in it. Only a very
great mind could answer all a child's questions about stones.
According to popular faith, my neighbor's darling is now playing with small ghostly stones in the Dry
Bed of the River of Souls, - wondering, perhaps, why they cast no shadows. The true poetry in the legend
of the Sai-no-Kawara is the absolute naturalness of its principal idea, - the phantom-continuation of that
play which all little Japanese children play with stones.
II
The pipe-stem seller used to make his round with two large boxes suspended from a bamboo pole
balanced upon his shoulder: one box containing stems of various diameters, lengths, and colors, together
with tools for fitting them into metal pipes; and the other box containing a baby, - his own baby.
Sometimes I saw it peeping over the edge of the box, and smiling at the passers-by; sometimes I saw it
lying, well wrapped up and fast asleep, in the bottom of the box; sometimes I saw it playing with toys.
Many people, I was told, used to give it toys. One of the toys bore a curious resemblance to a mortuary
tablet (ihai); and this I always observed in the box, whether the child were asleep or awake.
The other day I discovered that the pipe-stem seller had abandoned his bamboo pole and suspended
boxes. He was coming up the street with a little hand-cart just big enough to hold his wares and his baby,
and evidently built for that purpose in two compartments. Perhaps the baby had become too heavy for the
more primitive method of conveyance. Above the cart fluttered a small white flag, bearing in cursive
characters the legend Ki-seru-rao kae (pipe-stems exchanged), and a brief petition for "honorable
help," O-tasuke wo negaimasu. The child seemed well and happy; and I again saw the
tablet-shaped object which had so often attracted my notice before. It was now fastened upright to a high
box in the cart facing the infant's bed. As I watched the cart approaching, I suddenly felt convinced that
the tablet was really an ihai: the sun shone full upon it, and there was no mistaking the conventional
Buddhist text. This aroused my curiosity; and I asked Manyemon to tell the pipe-stem seller that we had
a number of pipes needing fresh stems, - which was true. Presently the cartlet drew up at our gate, and I
went to look at it.
The child was not afraid, even of a foreign face, - a pretty boy. He lisped and laughed and held out his
arms, being evidently used to petting; and while playing with him I looked closely at the tablet. It was a
Shinshu ihai, bearing a woman's kaimyo, or posthumous name; and Manyemon translated the Chinese
characters for me: Revered and of good rank in the Mansion of Excellence, the thirty-first day of the
third month of the twenty-eighth year of Meiji. Meantime a servant had fetched the pipes which
needed new stems; and I glanced at the face of the artisan as he worked. It was the face of a man past
middle age, with those worn, sympathetic lines about the mouth, dry beds of old smiles, which give to so
many Japanese faces an indescribable expression of resigned gentleness. Presently Manyemon began to
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